Grilling a turkey is one of the great dark arts of holiday cooking. It is an excellent choice for those who like to spend time outside, tending a fire and keeping away from family. It requires no skills beyond patience. The turkey ends up with a slightly more rustic flavor, smoky and rich. Two notes: First, use a brine to keep the bird moist, since opportunities for basting are hard to come by. Second, do not stuff the bird. Smoky turkey is excellent; smoky stuffing is not.

The best leftover dish is the first sandwich you make from what's left of the turkey, standing barefoot in a quiet kitchen lighted only by the dim bulb above the stove: thick toast with mayo and cranberry sauce and dressing and slices of just-carved meat.
No, scratch that (though it's delicious and you should make two or three). The best leftover recipe is risotto with turkey and wild mushrooms, the grains of rice plump with turkey broth and made nutty with cheese. The soft richness of the meal recalls Thanksgiving, then amplifies the memory, giving it a rakish flair.

This is a good option for cold-weather Thanksgivings eaten under threatening skies, since the combination of herbs and citrus provides a house-filling aroma that speaks to sunniness. Garnish with some remaining sprigs of sage and thyme, but be careful with the rosemary, as a little goes a long way.

The first Thanksgiving I took part in cooking was when I was 20, a college kid in Boston, living in a big, rambling house. The apartment was a kind of clubhouse devoted to a shifting list of priorities that included music, books, girls, beer, and food. On Thanksgiving we cooked a turkey. The recipe was my pal John Patrick Montaño's, and I still use it today: a roast bird glazed with a rosemary-infused teriyaki butter. The piney herb melds beautifully with the butter and sweet caramel of the mirin browning on lacquered skin. At once familiar and exotic, it results in flavor of astonishing depth.

John Willoughby, once the executive editor of _Gourmet_ and, with the chef Chris Schlesinger, one of the great interpreters of live-fire cooking in the United States, once said that there are only 11 recipes in the world, and those of us who labor in kitchens spend most of our time re-inventing them.
As an example, here is my adaptation of the recipe for cornbread Schlesinger served in his East Coast Grill from the time he opened the place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1985\. The adaptation? I have added a few cups of frozen organic corn for texture. Those who wish to go further might add a fine dice of fiery chipotle peppers in sauce, or cook a few slices of bacon in the skillet before cooking the dish, and add the crumbled result to the batter. The fat left over in the pan would allow you to reduce the amount of butter you use by about 2 tablespoons.

Here is a recipe I adapted from the cooking of Kurt Gardner, a New York theater man of great culinary passions who has been contributing the dish to our home for years, usually in proportions large enough to feed boroughs. Rare is the month where there is not a frozen bag of this stuff in our freezer, ready to be deployed.